There's more to success than the creative review
As digital agency professionals, our goals for each project should be — must be — two-fold:
1. Make spectacular work that delights our clients in the creative review.
2. Make sure the work will produce delightful results for our clients once it's out in the world.
(I'd actually add a third one: make sure the work meets our ethical responsibilities regarding accessibility for people with disabilities — but this can and should be folded into both of the above.)
We always focus on that first goal — the sizzle! — but too often I see teams simply not thinking enough about the second one, and they end up paying for it.
This has happened to me way too often: A team comes to me after they've completed a piece and it's out in the world, and they tell me the client has reported that it isn't performing well; they were thrilled with the creative work, but now they're severely disappointed with the results it's producing. (And guess what, this is the first time I'm hearing about the piece; no one showed me ahead of time to get my feedback before the client saw and approved it.) This puts us in a really tough spot.
What can we do? How can we smooth this over with the client? Is there a fix? How did we get here?
Let me start with that last one. How we got here is that we weren't focused enough on success from the beginning.
Maybe we skipped some engagement best practices because we thought we could make the piece look cooler, or give it cooler functionality that would wow the client. Maybe the client told us they don't like x/y/z, and rather than explain to them why x/y/z is important for engagement, we just did what they wanted. Maybe we were too focused on winning an award and not focused enough on the users and their needs. Did we ignore some of UX's consultation because it felt like they were stifling our creativity? Hmm? Did we make the mistake of assuming that users would work hard to engage with our marketing materials — that they would enjoy taking the time to figure out how our site works because it's so cool? All of these things are the common reasons I see for a piece not being as successful as it could be.
How can we avoid this? The answer is obvious: do the opposite of all of that. :) And that's pretty much it! Success (or engagement, or whatever you want to call it) must be prioritized from the beginning, and this should (must!) inform all of our design choices, our content choices, and our functionality choices. We should discuss what success looks like in the kickoff. What is the client's desired result? How do we get them there? We should check ourselves along the way to make sure we're adhering to best practices and that everything we're doing is setting us up for success. We should never veto the consultation of our UX and accessibility consultants. Put yourselves in the shoes of users and consider how they look for content, and what content they're likely to be looking for. Not what we want to say and do — what will they be pleased to find?
Going back to the question of: How can we smooth this over with our client? This is incredibly tricky, and I am loathe to avoid any kind of solution that's dishonest. It's fair to tell our clients that the world of digital changes over time, and that we're constantly learning new ways to enhance engagement and/or avoid bounces. We see that this piece isn't performing as well as it could, which may be for a few reasons we've identified, and we have some ideas for enhancements that are likely to help. This is our opportunity to try to do the things that we should have done from the beginning, but it's never easy to work this way. Digital best practices should always be part of the plan for any piece, rather than something we try to clumsily tack on afterward.
We're the digital experts. It's our responsibility to educate our clients about the why of what we do, help them understand how best practices are best practices for a reason, and guide them toward making decisions that will enhance their success. When they see the results they'll thank us for it!
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.